Slavery Forced Labour In The Indian Ocean World

This course examines diverse types of slavery across the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The emphasis in this course is on the everyday lives of slaves of various social statuses, from powerful slave concubines and slave soldiers, to the drudgery of domestic and agrarian slavery. We will consider issues of identity, community and memory?in particular the efforts of slaves who were separated from their origins to form new communities and identities?and look at instances of slave resistance and rebellion. The latter part of the course turns to abolitionism in the Indian Ocean and the aftermath of the prohibition of the slave trade. We will see that colonial discourses surrounding slavery were highly ambiguous and examine whether new forms of colonial forced labour, like indentured labour, represented new forms of slavery. We will also explore global discussions of `modern day slavery? that have intensified since the early 2000s and critically analyse the continuities between historical and present-day forms of forced labour and bondage.